Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the department’s civilian employees must comply with the Department of Government Efficiency’s request for a list of their work accomplishments.
“I am now directing each member of the department’s civilian workforce, just civilian, to provide those five bullets on what they accomplished in their specific jobs last week, to reply to that email and cc their immediate supervisor,” Hegseth said in a video posted on X on Sunday.
Last week, the Defense Department told its workers to “pause any response” to the Office of Personnel Management’s summary email request. The DoD wrote in an X post on February 23 that it “is responsible for reviewing the performance of its personnel and it will conduct any review in accordance with its own procedures.”
In his Sunday announcement, Hegseth said the change in directive came after the Defense Department reviewed its procedures and consulted with the OPM. These checks were necessary because the department handles sensitive topics of national security, he added.
“We needed to be careful on that front,” Hegseth said in his video.
I am now directing each member of the department’s civilian federal workforce to provide 5 bullets of what they accomplished last week and comply with OPM’s email directive. https://t.co/BJOoEvVTza
— Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (@SecDef) March 2, 2025
When approached for comment, a representative for the Defense Department said civilian employees would be given instructions on how to respond to OPM’s email on Monday.
“It’s a simple task, really, as Elon said, as the president recognized in our first cabinet meeting. Just a pulse check,” Hegseth said on Sunday.
Hegseth said the department’s civilian employees should respond without providing any “classified or sensitive information” and give only “basic topics of what you did last week.”
Hegseth added that the reports will be “consolidated internally within the department to comply with the OPM’s directive.”
“Much appreciated @SecDef Hegseth!” Elon Musk, who is closely associated with the White House DOGE office, wrote in an X post in response to Hegseth’s video.
DOGE’s productivity email push
On February 22, OPM emailed federal employees, asking them to submit their work accomplishments by 11:59 p.m. ET on February 24.
Musk initially said on February 22 that failure to comply “will be taken as a resignation. But, on February 24, he said that workers who did not respond would be given “another chance.”
On Friday, OPM told federal employees they would be expected to submit a list of their work accomplishments every week.
The email request came after Musk said on Wednesday that DOGE would “send another email” after getting a “partial response.” The White House said on Tuesday that over a million workers had responded to OPM’s first email, less than half of the entire government.
“I wouldn’t say that we are thrilled about it,” President Donald Trump said of the response rate during a press conference on Wednesday.
“You got a lot of people that have not responded, so we are trying to figure out, do they exist? Who are they? And it’s possible that a lot of those people will be actually fired,” Trump said at the same press conference.
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